What a ride!

Ladies and gentlemen yesterday was a ride.

It was mid-week for my Kindle free ebook promotion on A Consternation of Monsters and sales had been only so-so in that department.  On Monday it moved 56 units.  Tuesday moved 133.  I thought that was pretty good.  But last Sunday I’d secured the services of FreeBooksy.com to help promote this sale and the earliest day they had available was Wednesday.  I figured if sales shot up then, I’d know where the traffic was coming from.  

Before going to bed Tuesday night, the wife kept asking me if I’d made any of Kindle’s bestsellers lists for free ebooks.  I told her no and that I wasn’t likely to since 180 free books sold is not big change by Amazon standards.  She thought it sounded bigger, though, until she finally looked up my book’s actual ranking number.  I was sitting at around 2200 on the free ebook bestsellers list.  They only show the top 100 on any of their bestsellers pages.  I went to sleep kind of disheartened, but still awaiting what FreeBooksy might do.  

When I woke up on Wednesday, I’d already sold 26 units.  Not bad, I thought.  Later in the morning, I decided to send out an email to nearly everyone in my email address book.  I figured if I was giving the book away to strangers then people I care about ought to know about it, too.  I made a joke toward the end of the email about being nowhere near the bestsellers mark, but that it was my dream to crack the top 1000.  I decided I wanted the actual ranking number I was currently at to include as well, just to show how far I had to go.  Instead of 2200, though, I was at 1216 on overall free ebooks and #40 on free ebooks in paranormal/urban fantasy.  I had to pinch myself.  And it really hurt!  

I went to check my Kindle sales figures and they were in the 300s.  And throughout the day that number continued to rocket skyward while the book climbed higher and higher on the bestsellers list in paranormal/urban fantasy.  It ended the day at #3 and when I woke up I was sitting at 87 on the overall free ebooks list.  It cracked the top 100!  And I sold over 1600 books total for the day.  (I say “sold,” though I’m not seeing a dime from this yet.  I’m still in this just hoping to get the book in front of eyes.  If only a quarter of the folks who “bought” it leave me a review on Amazon, I’ll count that as a success.)

Before we get too excited, though, I should just point out that the book is steadily sinking on the overall free ebooks list, as sales today are not blazing like they were yesterday.  They’re doing all right, already approaching Tuesday end-of-day numbers before noon, but things are dropping off.  (I hate to say it, and am making no claims about it, but for a brief time my book was even a slightly better bestseller than the free ebook English Standard version of the Holy Bible, at numbers 94 and 95 respectively.) 

As penance, and so my ego doesn’t swell any larger, I just went and looked at my print sales ranking among the bestsellers.  It’s currently sitting at a sobering #859,976.  That’s right.  I am the author of the 859,976th bestselling print book on Amazon. Break out the champagne, y’all.  

If you’ve not picked your free copy of the Consternation eBook, you have until midnight on Friday, January 15, 2016 to do so for free.  After that, it’s going up to $3.99.